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Rincewind
Captain (Junior Grade)
Posts: 277
Joined: Sun Aug 23, 2015 1:22 pm
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Duckk wrote:All of the following comes from a very long discussion on the Bar around the time of SftS's release, which should definitively clear up what Mike Henke was thinking:
Group: Snerkers Only
Author: davidweber
Date: Thu, 11 Sep 2008 23:40:32 GMT
Local: Thu, 11 Sep 2008 19:40:32 -0400
Peter, I'm sorry, but international perceptions just don't work that way. They simply don't.
Not firing the warning shot is not going to cause the SEM to fight a single star system it wasn't already going to have to fight. FIRING the shot wouuld not have dissuaded a single star system NOT to fight or changed its perception of who the agressor was in any way. Even if Mike had fired the famous warning shot, it would be totally -- and I mean TOTALLY -- lost in the ground clutter, short term, long term, or in the middle term. People who are willing to believe the SEM is in the right will be convinced that they ALREADY went the extra mile in warning Byng three separate times and in only firing on ONE of his ships; people who won't be convinced by what Mike already did will NEVER be convinced that the SEM was justified in ANYTHING it did or does which can be perceived as in any way contributing to the war. The SEM is never going to convince that crowd that they had any right do do anything beyond saying "Uh, excuse me, Massa, but did you really MEAN to kill all of our people? I mean, it's all right either way, of course, you being the SL and the master of the known universe and all, but we were just a little curious. If you feel like ansiwering us, go ahead. Otherwise, never mind. We'll just sit over here like obedient little neobarbs and mind our manners"
The issue here is whether or not what BYNG did was an act of war. It was. Any response which treats it as anything else, or which presents even the suspicion of weakness on the SEM's part, is ultimately the WRONG thing for Mike to do UNLESS the SEM has made the decision NOT to go to war against the SL NO MATTER WHAT PROVOCATION IS OFFERED. In fact, Elizabeth has already made the reverse decision, and her Navy ought to be perceived as hewing to that decision. They went absolutely as far -- indeed, possibly further -- than they ought to have gone, and there is no way in the universe that anything else they might have done would have affected ANYONE's view of war responsibility or the "mercifulness" of the SEM favorably.
There is a line between "trying to look like a nice guy" and looking weak. There is a line between "we took every step a REASONABLE person could have expected" and we "really, really, really tried to make nice to the people who already murdered three or four hundred f our naval personnel." And there is also the very accurate observation of Machiavelli that while it is good to be loved, it is even better to be feared. Diplomacy that strikes a reasonable note and is fairly and equittably approached and administered is fine. Treating defeated foes magnanimously and extending a helping hand to them after the smoke clears is absolutely sound policy. But first you DEFEAT them and demonstrate your own strength, show them that you are acting out of a genuine sense of fairness and statesmanship, not fear or perceived self-weakness. Looking like your cringing away from acting within the full, legal, RECOGNIZED scope of a star nation's right to self defense in the wake of an unprovoked act of war is NOT the way to have your diplomacy taken seriously by anyone. In fact, looking TOO merciful, TOO willing to "go the extra mile" is a very good way to be taken lightly -- the old "democracies are soft; you can tell because they're not willing to do what they should have done" calculus is still very much part of human nature and will be for as long as humans remain recognizably human.
Mike did the right thing.
***
Oops.
Sorry. I really didn't mean to get involved in this at all, and I think this post may sound just a bit more, ah . . . spirited than I intended it to. I started out drafting it more as an exercise than something I meant to post. Then I got into it and deicided I WAS going to post it. Then the phone rang, and it turned out we had two or three familial forest fires that needed pis--- er, putting out, and I got rushed and sent the whole thing off without proofing it and seeing whether or not it seemed too pointed in tone. If it did, I apologize.
At the same time, however, I stand by it. I only found out about the thread because Jophn mentioned it to me, and following his comments, he seems to have pretty ably (if, perhaps, a bit more forcefully a time or two than I would NORMALLY have phrased myself) summarized the arguments for what Michelle did. I would only add this.
As I already said in my post, nothing that Michelle did or didn't do at New Tuscany prior to actually firing on Admiral Byng's flagship is really going to have any bearing at all on any decisions which may be made in the Solarian League or any of its successor states. Zip. Nada. The fact that she pulled the trigger after DEMANDING that the Solarian League Navy comply with the Star Empire's demands is all that's really going to matter. No one is going to wonder about whether or not she should have fired a "warning shot" first. As John has already suggested, the practice of firing "warning shots" at warships of major stellar powers really has no place in the interstellar law of the Honorverse. Warning shots are fired, as a general rule, simply to demonstrate -- almost always to a merchant vessel or a suspected privateer or pirate, although perhaps on rare occasions it might also occur when you have a significantly more powerful warship underscoring its willingness to fire on the warship of a weaker star nation -- that the person firing the shot has not simply the ability but the intent to use potentially deadly force. Michelle had already made that abundantly clear, and simply firing a "warning shot" would have been construed (1) as an act of war involving deadly force or (2) a calculated insult to the Solarian League Navy, by relegating it to the standard of the weaker star nation or a suspected privateer, or even more likely (3) a combination of both.
In an immediate sense, firing a so-called warning shot would have been pointless where Josef Byng was concerned. In fact, a the "warning shot" would only have reinforced his belief that Michelle was basically bluffing, although admittedly there was no way that Michelle could have known that. What she did know was his record, the tenor and content of their own earlier conversations, the content and tone of his "conversation" with Commodore Chatterjee, and the fact that he hadn't even responded to her earlier messages but was heading out with the evident intent of offering battle or at least breaking past her ships and escaping. She didn't know exactly how effective her weapons were going to be (although she did anticipate that she would have a very significant qualitative edge), she had her orders which were to stop his ships by any means necessary, and she had absolutely no reason to believe that firing a warning shot would have produced any beneficial effect. And she was already convinced that Byng was party to use falsified sensor data against the Star Empire, which meant that even if she'd hired a "warning shot," the only records which would demonstrate that she had would be MANTICORAN ones which would undoubtedly be confronted by splendidly unofficial SOLARIAN records proving that she HADN'T, which would mean that her "spurious claim" to have done so would simply become one more propaganda point for the League's spinmeisters to use against the Star Empire. (And I suppose it's also worth pointing out that the Star Kingdom's experience with Solarian new services has been . . . less than pleasant since the very beginning of the Havenite wars. Why should she expect that to change at this point?)
In an intermediate sense, looking towards the future, Michelle's emphasis was quite rightly on what message she was going to send to the Solarian League Navy and to the bureaucrats running the League. The message she wanted to send to them was that the Royal Manticoran Navy was, indeed, prepared to embrace all-out war with the Solarian League if the League persisted in committing acts of war against Manticoran warships, territory, or citizens. She wanted them aware of the fact that the Royal Manticoran Navy does NOT "bluff" (which has always been a staple of Manticoran naval policy), and she wanted to make THEM aware of the fact that they held the short end of the hardware quality stick but to do it in a way which would preserve as much tactical surprise for the RMN as possible if the feared shooting war actually developed beyond this point.
In a long-ranged sense, looking to the more distant future and the possible question of how "merciful" or "bloodthirsty" the Royal Manticoran Navy is going to appear to current citizens of the Solarian League, Michelle had already gone much, much, much further than interstellar law required or custom demanded by giving Byng the OPPORTUNITY to comply with their demands in the first place, much less repeating the offer several times. Had JEAN BART been a vessel belonging to any other Navy in the galaxy, there would have been zero question of the propriety of her actions or of the distance she'd been prepared to go in the first place to avoid taking additional lives. The main difference between the Manties and anyone else in this case is that they are actually willing to take on the 8000-pound gorilla over a matter of principle . . . and, of course, the minor matter of the Sollies having slaughtered three or four hundred of the Queen's naval personnel without provocation, without warning, without any offer of the chance to surrender, and with no survivors.
Even if Michelle had had any reason to think ahead through the strategic analysis that Honor lays out for Elizabeth and the others later in the book, she STILL made the right decision. As John has been pointing out all along, there would be no way that Manticore could "win" in the public opinion contest simply because she'd chosen to fire a "warning shot" before opening fire in earnest. It's just not going to be a significant factor in any way when people start looking at the two sides a year or two down the road (assuming it comes to that). It isn't. What's going to be a significant factor is that (1) the Solarian League committed an unprovoked act of war in the neutral territory of a third party star nation; (2) the Star Empire of Manticore declined to let that act of war pass unchallenged; (3) Admiral Gold Peak gave Admiral Byng repeated opportunities to avoid any further exchanges of fire or loss of life; (4) Admiral Byng didn't even deign to reply, disregarded her demands, and headed directly towards her force; (5) Admiral Gold Peak destroyed a single ship, then gave the remainder of Admiral Byng's task group yet ANOTHER opportunity to comply with her initial demands without further loss of life; (6) after the action was over, Admiral Gold Peak was very careful to avoid any abuse of her POWs, or even to TREAT them as POWs; and (7) she kept only two of the Solarian ships as prizes, returning the others to Solarian possession (albeit with their electronics thoroughly disabled until repairs), DESPITE the fact that they had been participants in the massacre of her own Navy's destroyers. Anyone who isn't going to be swayed into recognizing the massive restraint the Manties exercised by all of THAT is most definitely not someone whose opinion would be swayed by the simple addition of a "warning shot." To be honest, the idea that they would be is fairly ludicrous.
As John has also ably, if somewhat forcefully, pointed out, what IS going to have an impact on long-term future public opinion in the Solarian League and any potential successor states is going to be how the Star Empire conducts itself after the war begins in earnest. If the Star Empire avoids trampling on the pride of its adversaries; if it acts rapidly and with compassion to pick up survivors and to avoid inflicting unnecessary casualties; if it respects the provisions of the Deneb Accords; if its diplomacy is directed towards reassuring people that it will treat even its ex-enemies with dignity and fairness in any negotiating process; if (as I believe Admiral Givens pointed out) it refrains from pressing predatory economic advantages; and if it adheres scrupulously to whatever treaty obligations it assumes, then it has a darn good chance of presenting itself as the "Good Guys"™ and the corrupt Solarian League (especially if it can demonstrate Mesan influence) as the "Bad Guys"™ in the only public opinion contest which is really going to matter.
I realize that those who are claiming that she should have fired the "warning shot" are arguing in effect that by not doing so she's "missed the opportunity" to seize the moral high ground from the outset. Frankly, it couldn't matter less. First because without getting into whether or not John's calculations on turnaround times for newsies are accurate, the fact is that the League is such an enormous dinosaur that the competing versions of what actually happened at New Tuscany are going to be chasing one another around the galaxy for years. It's going to be kind of like getting to mutually contradictory "facts" out onto the Internet; the "correct" fact simply can't catch up with and kill the "incorrect" fact. People are going to adhere to the one that they "know" is correct, and you're not going to be able to shake their conviction with anything short of a thermonuclear demolition charge. In that respect, yes, getting the Star Empire's version out first would seem to offer at least some advantages. But those advantages are all SHORT-TERM, not long-term, as some people seem to be arguing. The only real advantage in getting the Star Empire's version to Chicago first would lie in the way that it would affect the viewpoints of decision-makers . . . and the order in which the conflicting reports get to Chicago is going to have zero consequence for the viewpoints of those decision-makers. They don't care. It isn't their JOB to care, the way they see it. It's their job to make the most advantageous decision, and hang the facts and the morality of the decision OR its consequences. That's just the way it is in their universe, and there's not enough time for their fundamental view of the universe and of their place in that universe to change enough for them to be affected one way or the other by whether or not Michelle Henke fired a "warning shot." They're going to make their decision based on a lot of the same factors that Admiral Crandall used in making her decision, even if they are (hopefully, at least) a little less likely to allow immediate, unreasoning fury to factor into their decisions. But the truth is that they aren't really concerned with whether or not Admiral Byng killed several hundred "neobarb" spacers without provocation or good reason. After all, there are always plenty of more neobarbs where they came from. What they're going to be concerned about are the implications of Michelle's actions -- and their response to those reactions -- when it comes to setting precedent for the League's and, specifically, for the SLN's relations with ALL neobarb, second rate navies. And, almost inevitably, they are going to come to the same conclusion that Crandall did: that it would be catastrophic for the League to allow Michelle's actions to set a precedent which would hold the League accountable to SOMEONE ELSE, regardless of the circumstances. And that the way to avoid that catastrophic outcome is simply to go ahead and snuff out the Star Empire of Manticore, using their stupendous numerical, financial, and industrial edge to offset any trivial technological superiority the Manties may fleetingly enjoy. It would hardly be the first time that OFS and its allies in the diplomatic and military bureaucracies had done the same thing, after all.
In the long run, everything else gets lost in the ground clutter. Certainly any advantage which might have accrued by firing a completely unnecessary "warning shot" that neither law nor custom demanded of Michelle would be totally inconsequential beside the far more substantial and substantive issues and precedents that are going to be thrown up and set in the ensuing warfare. Any such advantage, at the very best, is totally inconsequential and utterly unimportant compared to the message (as summarized above) that she wanted to send directly to the Solarian League Navy and the bureaucrats behind it. And by acting as she did, she sent the CORRECT message as unambiguously as possible.
Whether or not her intended recipients read it correctly or not, is, of course, beyond her control. But, again, as John says: in my opinion, Michelle did the right thing. No one is required to agree with me, of course, but at the moment, at least, I think I've got a better feel for how the consequences are going to play out than anyone else does. [G]
***
Sorry, Peter. I already posted an apology for my, ah . . . forcefulness elsewhere.
I don't disagree with you at all that magnanimity is going to be as important as force IF the SEM is going to pursue the policy Honor sketched out to Elizabeth. (And which I happen to think gives them the best chance of survival in the short term and the best chance of achieving a relatively [note the adverb] stable and prosperous peace following the break up of the League.) That, I think, is a given. Where I've taken exception to certain logic chains is in the belief that a warning shot at New Tuscany would have contributed in any way to that perception of magnanimity. Part of it, I think, is that if it were that easy to create the right perceptions, then the war would never have happened in the first place. It's HARD to create that sort of perception while at the same time doing what one has to do to (a) survive and (b) convince people not to adopt policies which are going to be inimical to one's own essential policy goals. George Kennan's strategy for the Cold War was right and relatively easy to sumarize; it was extremely DIFFICULT to put into practice with any sort of consistency. (Clausewitz, anyone?) Winning the PR war isn't all that hard if one side is kind enough to operate genocidal extermination camps, experiment on prisoners, shoot women and children, execute POWs on sight, and raze entire cities to the ground for deying it. Well, when that happens and the other side can get the story out and have anyone believe it, anyway. Winning the PR war under other circumstances is HARD. Remember that even at the height of WWII there were still people who referred to it as "Mr. Roosevelt's War" and felt we should have stayed the heck home rather than mucking around in something that was none of our business. Well, okay, deal with the Japanese if you have to, following that unpleasantness in Hawaii, but even THAT was FDR's fault for gratuitously irritating Nippon, when you came right down to it.
My point was simply that warning shots, which are not really an applicable part of the Honorverse laws or customs of war in the first place, would have disappeared without a ripple into the way the entire Manty response is portrayed/observed/interpreted within the existing League (where the initial post-League viewpoints of war guilt and bloodthirstiness are going to be formed) and that the opinion shaping you are rightly positing as necessary is going to have to be done later through other policies and approaches AFTER the fecal mnatter hits the rotary air impeller.
And the corollary to the point above is that in the short term, purely as a military commander responding to a militarty situation and obeying her instructions from her superiors, Mike Henke (whose judgment some people appeared to be questioning) did precisely what she was supposed to do and sent precisely the right message -- "Hey! Don't think you can get away with killing Manticoran citizens without being held accountable and, oh, by the way, we've got enough of a qualitative edge to hurt you really, REALLY badly if you decide you want to push it anyway" -- to the SLN and the bureaucrats.
I'm not saying it was a perfect decision or that it had a perfect outcome; only that it was the BEST decision available to her and that it had the LEAST IMPERFECT outcome she could hope to achieve. If there'd been a "perfect" solution, then no one in the SEM would be worrying about fighting a war with an incredibly powerful star nation so stupid and corrupt it's allowing itself to be manipulated by MESA, for goodness sake!
Just rereading some old posts & I came across this. Was this an attempt to write the longest post on these forums? Or, Is there an even longer one? (Shudder). |
